Palo Gallery presents I am the I am, a group exhibition curated by Danny Moynihan on the subject of the Sublime. This exhibition will consist of sculpture, works on paper and paintings spanning almost 300 years, featuring works by Alma Allen, Ali Banisadr, Colin Brant, Will Bruno, Xanthe Burdett, Francesco Cima, Ronan Day-Lewis, Eugene Delacroix, Patricia Geyerhahn, Jacob Philipp Hackert, Sunny Kim, Ferdinand Kobell, Sean Landers, Matvey Levenstein, John Martin, Thomas Moran, Danny Moynihan, Chad Murray, Friedrich Preller the Elder, Elliott Puckette, Luisa Rabbia, Charlie Roberts, Thomas Rowlandson, George Sand, Sarah Schlesinger, Pierre-Jacques Volaire, Carleton Watkins and Joseph Wright of Derby. Please join Palo Gallery and Danny Moynihan for a celebratory opening reception on Wednesday, 29 January 2025, from 6 PM to 8 PM at 30 Bond Street in New York City.

Late 18th and early 19th-century Romantic painters, poets and writers often created in reaction to the mass industrialization and urbanization proliferating worldwide. Today, the arts have undergone a similar change. Our ever-increasing modernity, online existence, and urbanization in face of crises and environmental destruction has created the space for contemporary artists to pick up the torch carried from Casper David Friedrich to Georgia O’Keefe, and reinterpret for the contemporary audience. I am the I am aims to compare and contrast the sublimity throughout our past with those produced in the present.

The Sublime is often described as a quality that evokes a sense of awe, wonder, and sometimes fear by confronting the viewer with something beyond human comprehension or control. It is an experience that transcends mere beauty, tapping into the vastness, power, or mystery of nature, the universe, or the divine. Sublime art often evokes a mixture of admiration and terror, stirring emotions that arise when faced with the immense or the ineffable. Whether through vast landscapes, dramatic contrasts, or profound themes, sublime art confronts the viewer with both the limits and potential of human existence, often leaving one with a sense of humility or transcendence.

Historically, artists tend to embrace and explore the expansive power of nature in opposition to the increasing size of the man-made world. This can be seen in the paintings by Eugene Delacroix, John Martin, and Joseph Wright of Derby. In our 21st-century condition, we find ourselves experiencing another pivotal shift towards the digitization of life paralleled with the rapid destruction and disappearance of these epic natural landscapes. Almost as if on cue, contemporary artists, particularly young ones, are returning to the embrace and exploration of nature and its motifs, just as one can see in the artworks by Colin Brandt, Xanthe Burdett, Patricia Geyerhahn and Sean Landers. The approaches vary in admiration and respite; in some as a mourning of what is lost, whereas the rare few examine the sublimity of the destruction itself.

Referencing Exodus 3:14 in both the Bible and the Torah, the prophet Moses asks God who he is, with God replying, “I am the I am”. This phrase implies there is no physical personification of God, but that God is an eternal timeless presence; it alludes to God’s essence being all-encompassing, representing a profound identity that is both deeply hidden and yet completely apparent. The Book of exodus indicates that God is sublime in his infinite omnipotence, existing beyond comprehension as the I Am. The embodiment of this interpretation is nowhere more poignant than in the painting by Casper David Friedreich.

In his groundbreaking book, Modern Painting and The Northern Romantic Tradition, art historian Robert Rosenblum wrote, “where an individual is confronted by the overwhelming incomprehensible enormity of the universe as if the mysteries of religion had left the ritual of the church and been relocated in the natural world”. It is a thread that Rosenblum wove through great romantic painters of the 18th-century to Mark Rothko and beyond, perfectly encapsulating the exhibition's curatorial theme.